In all kinds of automatic vending machines, the coin processing device is an important component. Any one who wishes to purchase a product or service from the automatic vending machine or to obtain a certificate of payment, inserts a coin into the coin processing device and will be given the requested product, service or certificate, after the coin is sensed, identified and processed. Such an automatic vending machine may be used as a product vending machine, such as a cold drink vender, a service vending machine, such as a payphone, a game machine etc., or a ticket vending machine.
The functions as provided by a coin processing device include: coin sensing function, to identify whether an inserted coin is processable by the coin processing device; coin identification function, to identify the sort of an inserted coin; coin charging function, to charge the inserted coin to a temporary storage through decided path(s), and coin processing function, to process the inserted coin as required, including acceptance and rejection of the inserted coin. In general, a conventional coin processing device has all or a part of the above functions.
Because of the different size and material of coins that may be inserted into a coin processing device, coins being inserted shall be processed in different manners according to the size and material and other features of them. In order to conduct such processing, some problems need to be solved.
First of all, coins to be processed are stored in the temporary storages before they are processed as being accepted or rejected. The more sorts of coins the coin processing device can process, the more temporary storages will be needed. The temporary storages are provided as parts of or extensions to the coin tracks. Space occupied by the temporary storages is approximately in ratio to the number of the temporary storages. Besides the temporary storage, a coin track is necessary to be used as exit way of coins that the coin processing device is not able to process. This coin rejection track occupies a part of the space of the coin processing device. While it is always necessary to make the coin processing device as compact as possible, the space that can be used by the coin processing device is limited. Designers of the coin processing device have to face a dilemma: The coin processing device needs to be compact, while the sorts of coins to be processed need to as many as possible.
Taiwan utility model number 94587 (filing number 82213793) discloses an “improvement of coin track mechanism”, wherein the mechanism has one single coin track, which has one fake coin exit way, one genuine coin storage, one coin acceptance exit way and one coin rejection exit way. Two stoppers are provided in the coin track. The first stopper is used to reject coins that are identified as fake coins and the second stopper is used as gate for the coin acceptance exit way. This coin track mechanism is able to process only one sort of coin.
Taiwan utility model No. 123142 (filing number 85217794) disclosed a coin collecting device invented by the same inventor. This device comprises in substance tow coin tracks aligned in parallel. The first coin track is used as exit track for coins that are identified as fake coins. The second coin track is used to store coins that are identified as genuine coins. Acceptance and rejection of coins are processed inside the second coin track. In this invention, a coin selection level is used to control the pathways of the fake coins and the genuine coins. Mechanical errors and malfunctions tend to happen, since the selection of the pathways is controlled by a level. This invention is able to process a single sort of coin.
It is thus necessary to provide a novel coin processing device that is able to process a plurality of sorts of coins with a compact device.